Read the complete unedited transcript of
Derek Walmsley's conversation with Will Oldham which formed the
basis of this month's cover feature

D: Is it Louisville you’re living in these
days?

W: Exactly.

D: Do you play gigs down there?

W: There probably would be opportunities to play gigs. I dunno….
We did a kinda of show a couple of weeks ago, just where we played
a gig with about 50 people.

D: Do you still play with your brothers at all, Ned and
Paul?

W: We had a couple of shows in Charlottesburg, Virgina in the
summer time. Paul has gone to a school to learn to build guitars in
Arizona. Hopefully Ned will come out to some of the shows… at least
open the shows.

D: I always really liked Ned’s output. You produced one of those
albums back in the day, didn’t you?

W: Yeah, maybe a co-production credit….

D: Was it Ned who originally encouraged you to write songs?

W: He did, like there was one time, one of a number of
unpleasant periods on many levels, the late youth I guess, I was
living with him, he’d taken me in. We lived in Madison, Virginia,
more or less in the woods. When we were there, my daily activity
was to walk through the woods to the public library and read for a
couple of hours and come back. That was kind of what I did. [he
chuckles] And one day I asked what I was going to do. And I said,
‘I’m not sure’. And he said “why don’t you write a song today?”. I
think there sort of three significant times where someone did that,
twice in 1989, and that time was probably in 91.

D: 89 would have been the first time you picked up a guitar?

W: Yeah, think so. When I could put three chords together as
opposed to just one.

D: When you were growing up and fairly young, how important was
it to become an actor? Was it always the plan when you were growing
up to act?

W: Well, as much as a kid has a plan… but it was the only thing
that I could imagine participating in, that I could see myself in
the future being involved with.

D: Maybe it’s quite unusual for kids to see themselves as
actors. What inspired that?

W: I don’t know [sighs] Maybe I didn’t like myself or something,
and liked the idea of being words to speak, and adventures to
have.

W: It kind of didn’t, exactly. And I kept sort of waiting for
the moment when I would figure it out, and things would click, and
I would have the emotion that I felt like I was seeing in stage
actors I admired in Louisville, or film actors. I was waiting for
that sliding in…

D: Which stage actors?

W: They were a bunch of local actors… Michael Kevin, William
McNulty, Ray Fry, John Peelmire, sometimes visiting actors, a guy
called Randall Mau. Holly Hunter came to Louisville and was in a
play, Mary McDonald as well. They made huge impressions.

D: I wonder why it didn’t click for you, that moment of emotion.
Because you’re given different lines each time, because you have to
put on a front, a face?

W: I think it was more that I read into most actor‘s
performances a freedom or a freewill that effectively isn’t really
there when you’re acting, when you’re being directed. They were
good actors, and they made it seem as if they were the character.
And I guess I sort of realised I never really wanted to occupy the
character in that way, and have the character something that was
completely separate from my own inner life. I think that’s what it
was. I saw them as … I imagined that they were …

D: This was a slice of life?

W: A slice of life, and that this character was part of some
kind of life trajectory that they’re on. And I think most great
actors that isn’t the case, most great actors have their own life
trajectory, the character motion doesn’t have anything to do with
their life motion. But when I was a kid, you just observe and try
to learn from what your observe.

D: You were in Matewan. Was that a good experience?

W: A great experience, although I didn’t feel very satisfied
with my own work, but everything else about it I completely
loved.

D: John Sayles is obviously a left-wing director, did that
resonate with you?

W: Well, left wing or political, I don’t think those words apply
as much as…. Again, my view of what actors do or they did. That,
indeed, Sayles and other people involved with that movie seemed to
incorporate things beyond the characters, beyond the story. That
the storyline of the movie, the characters of the movie, and the
action of the movie, somehow was integrated into their world view.
It was reassuring, and it was also misleading, because I thought
that that was potentially a normal practice in the world of
professional filmmaking. But I think it’s not, it’s [anomalous]

D: Screen acting, the camera can be in close, the little
twitches in the face can give the emotion to the performance. Was
it the same with the early albums, the twitches in the voice, the
little inflections are what give the emotion maybe?

W: Yeah, fully. Especially I feel like I’m a much better, more
fluent singer than in 1993 when There Is No One What Will Take
Care Of You came out. I think that I struggled during that
recording of that, on the microphone, to use the tiny tics and
twitches and inflections to express what I wished that I could
express in a larger melodic way, or in a larger vocally … I dunno….
Vocally flexible way. I felt that at least if I gave a little hint
or clue as to where my voice could be going, that that would read.
Because people can listen closely, you know, you can sit with
headphones or you just concentrate on music, you can just hear,
sometimes, the desires of the voice itself.

D: There’s a moment in the title track where as you’re singing a
high note, your voice breaks. Was that emotional thing, or the
voice wanting to go?

W: It’s the voice wanting to go, completely. And it was kind of
… it surprised me a bit unpleasantly when people would remark about
the voice cracking and that being a some sort of strange defect or
something, because at the time I really thought I was singing the
best I could, and didn’t notice those things, I thought like, just
going for it.

D: What was the mood like recording that album? It seems to have
a singular atmosphere

W: Well, all the material was pre-written, and all the song
structures existed basically as they were, in terms of bars and
measures and chord progressions and all that, they were pretty set.
But then it was about taking advantage of what group we were, and
the record is the same six people, I think, all over the record,
but on one song, Brian McMahon might play drums, on another song he
might play guitar, and another might play bass. Everybody is
switching around on every song.

D: So there was no need for credits?

W: Well, I felt like credits, I thought that would be
distracting, because I thought that people would try to puzzle over
who plays what were, or just that it was too much detail that had
nothing to do with people having a pure experience with the music.
You know, like, records up until, say, the 70s it seemed like pop
records, a Frank Sinatra record was like, The Nelson Riddle
Orchestra. No more information. Elvis Presley records, zero
information. Or even…. Like, The Rolling Stones started at a
certain point with something like Let It Bleed, to say
Mick, guitar, Keith, Bass…

D: And the magic is gone?
[page break]
W: Actually, at that point that was more exciting, because the
Rolling Stones started sounding like weird lab experiments from
that point through to the early 80s, I think, for the Rolling
Stones.

D: At one point, didn’t you want There Is No One What Will
Take Care Of You to be a bit of a Let It Bleed type
record?

W: Let It Bleed or Beggar’s Banquet, kind of
record, yeah.

D: That kind of creative messiness, or the organic way it
develops?

W: Organic way it develops, and as well, like, my impression of
how those records were made, at least, was to treat each song as if
it was a single, kind of? So when we began each song, to try and
fully get into that song, and that’s one thing that allowed for
different people playing different things, because it just meant,
OK, now our world revolves around this song, now our world revolves
around that song, and letting everybody’s playing and everybody’s
imagination go as far as possible with that song, and not
necessarily thinking about… yeah, just like that. I feel like that
was something that I had read about how the Rolling Stones
approached specifically those records…. But I think they did carry
on that way through, even like Black And Blue
probably.

D: Is that a long process for recording? Was it a pro
studio?

W: I dunno… I still haven’t witnessed enough of other people
making their records to know what is long and what is short. If I
even picked my favourite records, if I could, I have no idea if
they were made in a day, or made in a week, or made over a year, or
five years… so I have no idea. I feel like we spent about…. A
month, more or less with that record? The engineer was a guy named
Grant Barger who had been at audio engineering school with Todd
Brasheer, who is very significantly over that record…. And he had
an eight track cassette recorder, and that's what it was recorded
on in two locations, one was in a sort of super-sized shotgun house
in a neighbourhood of Louisville called Butcher Town. A shotgun
house is sort of a detached row house…. I guess it’s kind of a
trademark architecture of cities like Louisville, where it’s a way
of minimising the frontage, but having a long skinny house,
basically, vintage, say, 1880 to 1920 or so was the heyday of
shotgun houses in the Louisville area. And this was a kind of neat,
big, old shotgun house that had been built on what later turned out
to be just the riverside of the flood wall. Because there were a
couple of significantly damaging floods, when the river flooded, so
they built this floodwall at some point, in the latter half on the
20th century. And so this house was on the other side of the flood
wall, like on the riverside, so my friend was able to get it
relatively cheaply, because it was potentially under threat, it was
difficult to insure. And he had essentially occupied the upstairs,
and the downstairs was just a big, dusty unfinished brick open
space. And it was winter, no heat, but that’s where we did about
half of the record. And the other half we did in kind of like a
cabin, a modern cabin vintage, say, 1975, in the woods in country
called Mead county, on a piece of land called Big Bend, because
it’s where the Ohio River does essentially a full U turn. So that
house was in the woods, and kinda far from everything, and that’s
where the other half of it was recorded, with all of us sort of
sleeping on the floor there. The other house we could sleep in our
own houses, but when we were at this house, this house was called
Merciful, on Big Bend. And to some extend I think the vocal
qualities were affected by the wood burning stove that we used to
heat the room, and the smoke, it made the air a little harsh. And
then eventually we went, I think, to Todd’s house, and maybe just
mixed in his bedroom. He actually just gave me the stereo amp and
speakers that we had used to mix the record on, he just gave them
to me a couple of months ago, which was pretty neat.

D: It’s something I only found out recently, but you took the
photo on the front cover of the Slint album. I imagine at that time
you were maybe making a little bit of music?

W: None. I had no interest at all in music at that point. I was
in acting, and had never played a note of music at that point,
never imagined that I ever would. So, they were my friends. My
father actually took the photo of the first Slint record, the car,
and I’m sitting in the car with a motorcycle helmet on. But it felt
great, being part of the Louisville music scene, something that I
started to hear about through my older brother, he sort of left the
house and went to punk shows and hung out with the boho, punk, art
scene, and would start to hear about David Grubbs, or Tim Harris
and Tara Key who are now in Antiedam. Antiedam is a supergroup,
Tara Key’s an amazing guitar player, they were like a generation
before. So I knew there was a some kind of crazy music scene going
on, and my first introduction to it was going to see my brother’s
band, Lanquid And Flacid, at a Sunday all ages matinee, that was
kind of crazy, being flung into the pogo, slamdancing floor by some
of the older kids, although to me they seemed like adults at the
time. And then I remember one day sitting in Social Studies class
one day in like 83, and Britt Walford and Brian McMahon saying that
they were going to drive to Newport Kentucky, which is like half an
hour away, to see Husker Dü play, and said, you wanna go?

D: Did you know Husker Dü?

W: Only from my brother’s room, and specifically I kind of knew
Metal Circus, because I always remember the song “It’s Not
Funny Anymore” coming out of my brothers, because the rest of it at
the time sounded like noise …“It’s Not Funny Anymore” and ““Diane”
from Metal Circus, I could say ‘hmm, those are songs’.
But, you know, I was mostly listening to Elvis, and the Everly
Brothers and Buddy Holly and things like that, so it was a far cry,
sonically. I think this was between the release of Zen
Arcade and New Day Rising, and it was insane, we had
to get really, really poorly fashioned fake ID, just where we’d
stencilled onto Public Transport identification, they didn’t have
space for date of birth, so we just put it on there, you know,
totally different font and everything. And that was sort of the
beginning of understanding how interesting and exciting music was
in Louisville, and then as well, starting to be turned onto what
was the independent or underground music world at the time, labels
like SST or Touch And Go or Homestead, specifically. And pretty
soon this great relationship with the Chicago scene started to
form, specifically though, like, Grubbs and Clark Johnson and
Squirrel Bait, tying into, like, Naked Raygun and Urge Overkill and
Big Black, so yeah, it was really fucking exciting times. And then
when Squirrel Bait got on Homestead, that opened up, by proxy, the
community to Dinosaur or Sonic Youth, who did at least one record
on Homestead, and even Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds had a record or
two licensed to Homestead. So it was incredible, really exciting,
you felt like you were connected to it in some way, it was just a
couple of people removed, between me and, like Mike Watt…. And he
was still, you know, an icon.
[page break]
D: How did the release of the first record come about?

W: The release of the first record came about…. Essentially, I
didn’t understand, it took me a while to understand… spending so
much time in the music scene was en education, like while I was
doing it, it was my joy [laughs], and it was my free time, because
I was doing all this theatre stuff, and then I realised I had
learned so much through Squirrel Bait, and Slint, and King Kong,
which is another huge deal, Louisville group King Kong, who are
still in one form still in effect. But I lived in Limington with
Todd and Grant who had recorded their first record, and just kind
of, you know, one of the things we had decided to do their, because
Todd and Grant were still in this audio programme, was just do some
recording over the course of the summer, and we did some recording
at the house, on Grant’s eight track cassette, and then we did some
recording in the university studio, and in the university studio we
did "Ohio River Boat Song" and the version of "Riding" that’s on
the Lost Blues And Other Songs. And then at the house we
did "For The Mekons Et Al" and "Drinking Woman", and another song,
"Two More Days". And I just thought…. I was pretty out of touch
with most of the world at that point, kind of, and I thought it
would be …. Great, if someone would consider releasing a 7”,
specifically of "For The Mekons" and "Drinking Woman", I thought,
this would be a really cool 7” record. So I sent those around, to a
couple of labels. I sent it to Drag City because I’d met this woman
named Tanya Small, who’d said, oh, I’m going to give you a record I
played on, and she gave me the Silver Jews, Dying Map Of The
Reef 7”, and she’d played percussion on one other songs. And
I’d never heard of Drag City, never heard of Pavement, but I liked
this Silver Jews 7” very much, everything about it. And Dan from
Drag City wrote a letter back saying we like this, we’d like to
hear more. And I sent them, I think, "Ohio River Boat Song" and
"Riding", I think that was done at that point in the summer. They
were like, yeah, we’d like to do a 7” of "Ohio River Boat Song"
with "Drinking Woman", and then that was also while I was writing
all these songs that were to be on this first record, even though I
was just writing songs, and I was kind of blown away when Drag City
went, so when are you going to do a full length? So as soon as they
said that I was like, [adopts businesslike voice] now, right
now.

D: the acting skills come into play!

W: Kind of, yeah. It’s definitely important to be open enough to
seize an opportunity when the opportunity is there.

D: At one point, were you studying at Brown College, is that
right?

W: Brown University, yeah. I went their off and on after
graduating from high school… I started there, went from just a
semester, hated it, and then moved to Los Angeles, and then I did a
movie in Montana, and then I met a guy who became one of my closest
friends, and went to live with him and a bunch of other people in
New York, then eventually went back to University for another
Semester and hated it again, left for another full year’s cycle,
and then went back, did a full year, then moved to Indiana with
Todd and Grant, did this initial recording and writing, went back
to school, and hooked up with a music professor called Jeff Titan
who’s like an ethnomusicologist, and said “would you, for one of my
classes, could I bring these songs to you that I’m working on, and
if I explain to you their historical relevance, like where they
come from, I’ll just keep working on these songs and I’ll weekly
come in and meet with you and explain everything I’m doing", and he
was into the idea.

D: So there was always historical references in your songs? I
know there was the Washington Phillips.

W: Yeah, and generally, all the songs were drawn specifically
from different kinds of old Scottish, Irish ballads as well as some
R&B, some gospel, some blues things, that I could sort of draw
specific lines … I figured that was the best way I could present it
to this guy, so I could continue to work on the songs, rather than
devote myself to a bunch of schoolwork that I didn’t really give a
shit about.

D: Did he help?

W: Hmmm, no….. he essentially helped by being supportive, he
didn’t really have much to say. He seemed to be…. The kind of
professor who doesn’t really probably care that much about
teaching, I think he has the university job because he loves what
he’s studying, he loves his research, and teaches because that’s
the best way, that’s a way of following through with that. I liked
him, but I took one class with him, he wasn’t very charismatic or
informative necessarily.

D: There’s a lot of literary references in those early works.
Where did they come from? Just reading widely?
[page break]
W: I guess so. The Alain Fournier came from .. I just found that
book at my parent’s house, they had it, and it compelled me because
the edition we had had an Edward Gorey cover, and even as a kid,
Edward Gorey was attractive to certain minds, and definitely was
attractive to mine. In English it’s called The Wanderer,
and it’s just a very compelling book. And Pushkin…. My friend Brian
who I met in Montana who I had lived with in New York, he then
moved to Russia, and I went to visit him, and Pushkin references
more, like, the experience of seeing the Pushkin statue. And then
there was a famous dedication speech that Dostoyevsky gave … I’ve
never read a lick of Pushkin that I enjoyed, and I’m still waiting
to be turned on to Pushkin himself, but that speech was very
inspiring and the statue is completely awesome.

D: The later Bonnie 'Prince' Billy records, there’s a lot more
of your voice with a woman’s voice. Is that a change which has
happened a lot over time. Do you miss that communal feel of those
older albums?

W: No, I mean the communal feel is completely there, completely,
and probably more so, I think. I feel like the Bonnie 'Prince'
Billy are much more communal and natural than any of the records
before than one. It was a very hard record to make, that first
record. It was very difficult. They are… some of those gentleman
are very complicated people.

D: That’s not a bad thing.

W: Sometimes it is a bad thing.

D: How do you feel about how your voice has changed over the
years?

W: Um… it seems I can do much more with it. Singing a lot and
recording a lot as well as… it’s always super informative. And to
sing with other people and for other people, that’s when you can
really learn something about your voice. You can only learn so much
if you create your own boundaries all the time. But then, other
people can really teach you something. You know, if you’re trying
to sing with them, or if someone brings a style…. Like, singing
with Björk and Matthew Barney on the Drawing Restraint 9,
record. That’s an amazing class, given that piece of music, and
that set of words, and figuring our how to use my voice and
phrasing to put the two together. Really wild.

D: It seems to me you approach each album afresh.

W: Yep.

D: When did you start thinking about the current album? When did
you start writing songs for it?

W: I know that when I turned in Lie Down In The Light
to Drag City and to Domino I wrote both labels and said this is
this record, this is how I’d like to treat this record, and it’s
the opposite of everything you’d like to do with a record, but just
to prove to you that I’m not trying to be difficult or self
sabotaging, in four years I’ll bring another record to you that you
can do whatever you want with.

D: Was Lie Down In The Light a harder record to
market?

W: No, I just don’t really like marketing records. So it was
kind of like doing a record…. I wanted to fully enjoy that record,
in the writing, in the recording, and the releasing of it, so that
meant not marketing it. Because I don’t enjoy the marketing process
at all, really. And so I wanted to enjoy that record. I was
determined to enjoy every part, even in the recording process, when
things get, as they usually do in the recording process, more
difficult, more strained, I’d just say “no, don’t do that, how
could you enjoy this moment rather than finding it to be
super-unpleasant and difficult and challenging, why not just see
what you can get out of it’s that positive”. And I knew that would
be impossible with an extended promotional, touring… I just wanted
the record to sort of be, to have its own kind of life, but again,
I didn’t want them to think that I didn’t believe in my own work,
and that they shouldn’t believe in my work, so that’s why I made
that sort of deal with the devil, that there will be another record
and it won’t be too long from then. Because at that point I also
determined that I wouldn’t play any shows for a calendar year, sort
of a new year’s resolution that began in mid June, so I knew that I
would be able to focus on writing at some point during that
calendar year.

D: Was that a positive experience, not being on stage, not being
on tour?
[page break]
W: More than not being on stage, more than not being on tour, it
was… you know, one thing that Merle Haggard said at one point, the
worst thing about his life – which was otherwise a pretty
incredible life – was having to live a year in advance. And it is
terrible. I mean I have a great life, but that’s terrible. So it
was basically wanting to live a week in advance, a month in
advance. I’ve known about certain shows that are coming this spring
for 5-6 months already, and I still have a couple of months before
I start. And so it’s really inhibiting, it makes you feel like, no
matter what I do today, no matter what happens to me, no matter who
I meet, I have to be there, playing music, from 8:30pm to 11pm on
that day, in that city, in that state. To me that just means,
that’s it, you don’t have an unlimited potential of what your life
can become between now and that moment.

W: You’re living in the past all the time?

D: Kind of, yeah. So that was the good thing about that, and it
did allow for a couple times I performed with other people, I think
I sang with the Mekons at three or four shows in the Mid West, I
sang with Valgeir Sigurðsson who recorded The Letting Go
and put out a record of his own that I sang two songs on. I could
do them relatively last minute.

W: You do a lot of guest appearances, for instance the Current
93 one. Is that almost like a double life? Do you still work with
the Boxhead Ensemble?

D: No, I haven’t…. that was a really, really good experience
working with The Boxhead Ensemble on that tour. I met a lot of
musicians I’d never before, and… got to perform with musicians in a
primarily improvisational way, in front of an audience, but, you
know, the strength of the other musicians was such that, and the
vibe in general was such that… because also the other reason we
were playing the shows was to tour with this movie. So, it was
like, this opportunity to play music with people I’d never had the
chance and potentially would never otherwise have had the chance to
play with, and there’s no pressure, because the audience is there
and they get to see this movie, and then they also get to see all
these musicians do different things…. It’s all gravy. Travelling
with Ken Vandermark and Fred Lonberg Holm and my friends David
Grubbs, Jim White, Mick Turner… and the structures of those shows
was always that, whathisname, Michael, our musical director… it’s
been a long time. But he would basically each night say, “OK, first
you and you and you go up and play and do a piece, and then person
B should leave and then just a duo do another piece, and then these
three people will come on and add to that, it’ll be a quintet kind
of thing, and that quintet, you remember that thing you were doing
last night? Could you play that one theme you got into? Essentially
directing but leaving a lot of things open. And every night was
different, you know, the groupings that he put together were
different. So that’s why it was such a great experience.

D: I’ve heard before I think Steve Albini saying the way you
work in the studio can be quite spontaneous. Quite a lot of trying
to capture little moments. On "Come In", there’s a bit where the
last 20 seconds is like a piano solo that meanders off into
nothing. Is it still easy to capture that sense of intuitiveness?
Do you think some albums captured it better?

W: It’s all…. It’s all different. Primarily I have memories of…
you know rather than listening… to me that’s what making a record
is kind of all about. So if that wasn’t there on Beware, I
wouldn’t find any value in the record. Something like "Come In" and
"Trudy Dies", Neil and Jennifer from Royal Trux were the producers
of that, which was really … great because at that time I was still
very much learning about recording. And Neil and Jennifer both are
very confident and accomplished people in the recording studio and
also on stage. And their records then and now, there’s definitely…
you don’t hear the control. If it was a balance of chaos and
control, the chaos was overshadowing, but that isn’t the case. With
any of their shows that they’ve ever done, any of their records
that they’ve ever done, that isn’t the case, it’s definitely the
opposite. The sound of chaos is a value that they had, and Neil
still has more, Jennifer’s music gets tighter and tighter with RTX.
But Howling Hex definitely has it… he’s sort of precise about his
chaos in some ways.

D: Are you playing much guitar on your new album?

W: Yeah, I am, Lie Down In The Light I didn’t play at
all. And on this record I played, at least tracking on every song.
I know in "Heart’s Arms" when we mixed it we pulled my guitar out,
but I think it’s at least somewhat present in every other song.

D: To me my initial impression is that it seems to be one of
your funniest records. There seem to be a lot of good gags. Is that
intentional, that finely honed humour?

W: Well… I don’t know. I’ve had comedians tell me that all
comedians wish they were musicians… which I’m not sure if it’s true
or not, but a comedian did tell me that… and I know that on some
level, among say The Marx Brothers or Abbot And Costello or The
Little Rascals or the stand-up comedy of Steve Martin or Richard
Prior, when you’re experiencing that, the impression is they’re
living on the correct plane of existence. Living moment to moment,
and very quick with their brains, quick with their voices, or in
the case of Harpo Marx, quick with their actions. And also using
that speed of thought to turn dark situations into light
situations. So they’re the ultra-wizards of society, because they
can conquer the most complex and devastating of issues and turn
them into something that’s nothing but laughter, really just
release the power of those things.

D: Laughing at death? One of the things no animal can do.
[page break]
W: Amazing, yeah. I wonder, I wonder if there’s any footage of
wolves rolling on their back and laughing when they’ve just been
chomped on by an elephant. I’ve always tried to make the records
kind of as funny as possible. But that is kind of a comedy song,
that 'you don’t love me' song. There are very few songs that are,
from beginning to end, intentional comedy.

D: The way you’ve got two voices, with give and take between the
two, it kind of recalls June Carter and Johnny Cash on "Jackson",
or Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours where they’re prodding each
other with bilious lyrics. Do either of those examples appeal at
all?

W: Yeah, they totally do. And also in that there can be
different kinds of listeners, there can be listeners that it slides
right by them and it doesn’t matter, there’s another content that’s
available besides the word play, and then there’s some people who
might give it a deeper listen, ideally something like another
musician or songwriter would hear, hear like the joy of putting
something together that has these moments in there.

D: Looking at the track titles of the new album, the track
titles seem simpler, more I’s more You’s, were you trying to pare
down your writing in any sense?

W: No….. because in the titles it’s not necessarily in the way
the lyrics run. Titles, just as it was, …. The titles of songs has
always been kind of …. ‘ah, it has to have a title? Ok…’ so on
There’s No-one That Will Take Care Of You, on some of the
songs, I just used the first line, or the refrain of “Oh Lord Are
You In Need”, just, “…Ok.”. So on this record, other than something
like “Without Work You Have Nothing” … there’s a couple of little
like Elvis moments on the record, and that title is like an Elvis
moment, because even though the song, there’s no Presley anywhere,
the title is a reference to the “Without Love” song. In general
it’s like pulling out a simple, memorable …. 'Cause there’s other
way, you can title songs in strange, obsequious ways…

D: What’s the significance of Elvis to you? Was he a constant
presence?

W: Kind of, I guess so, there’s a few people, like The Everly
Brothers, Elvis Presely, Leonard Cohen, people that I listen to a
lot from early childhood to the present day, I continue to find
things in them that is very exciting, and it’s all the more
exciting, because there might even be a song now that I’ve known
for thirty years, and all of a sudden I’ll just be like “Oh, wow…”
Or with someone like Elvis, he went through so many musical stages…
that’s a lot of meat [laughs].

D: And that appeals?

W: Well it’s great that, all of a sudden, realise that you can
find a whole new, you can dig really deeply into a year of
recording sessions of Elvis, and it’s all there, something new for
you there.

D: Which eras stay with you most?

W: Well, it’s like a matter of familiarising, and then it
becomes like genetic material. Intensely, in the last year, it’s
been the period from like 1974-75 or something like that, and just
getting way into the hugeness that he invests in very simple, light
love ditty kind of things. But it’s big, and he uses the same
powerhouse rhythm section, and he uses the black chorus and the
white chorus combined just to put across this song that could be
done in a very, very simple way and still be a powerful song, he
gives it a different kind of power.

D: Does the artifice of Elvis appeal to you? The reinventions,
the way he can use the image to embody what he is?

W: I don’t see any artifice in Elvis. I don’t know if that’s me
being blind. If anything it’s something that contributed to his
decline and destruction was that he wasn’t using any artifice, and
he couldn’t live as what he’d created himself to be.

D: The Bonnie 'Prince' Billy persona. Where were you at when you
were coming up with the idea of Bonnie 'Prince' Billy. What most
appealed about the name? And it’s been going a long time now, would
you consider ditching the name? Does the persona outlive its
usefulness at some stage?
[page break]
W: I don’t really believe so, I don’t think I’d ditch it… the first
few years was just trying to learn everything about making a
record, and what significance an artist name had, and it didn’t
really seem to make that much sense for a while. It was difficult
to get to the place where I understood why an artist has a name,
and what it signifies and what it can potentially signify. And I
like Bonnie very much, he’s got a lot of room I think yet to grow,
and a lot of maturing yet to do as well. The only reason I can
think if it outlives it’s usefulness is if some radical
transformation, if I had some radical transformation, would come
over my whole being… which could happen with some catastrophe or
revelation or whatever, I certainly won’t rule those out.… I’m
very, very happy with my relationship with Bonnie. At a certain
point I couldn’t figure out, I spent the first few years of making
records trying to reconcile going in to making records, I’d never
made music,

My experience of listening to music, how can I reconcile that
with the process of making music. And it was difficult, that’s one
thing I didn’t understand about the artist thing, what does it
matter, you know, I just want to make this music and be able to
listen to it and have other people listen to it. Why play shows
when I just want to listen to the records, you know, and have
people listen to the records? Why would they want to see a show?
You can’t drive a car when you’re seeing a show, you can’t make
love to your partner while you’re seeing a show, or cook breakfast
or go to sleep, you have to stand in a club, why would you do that?
That’s not listening. And Drag City, Domino, they’re always talking
about shows and promotion and all this stuff. And it sort of got to
the point where this is not fun, this is not interesting, this
sucks. Especially after making Arise, Therefore, which up
to that moment was one of the most fulfilling things that I’d ever
been a part of in my life.

D: Some people would say that’s you most difficult record. What
is it about that?

W: Well, I think it’s that the songs are kind of a piece, and I
worked on them really hard, and I felt I’d learned a lot from the
three records and four singles and Hope EP up to that
point, I felt like I’d learned a lot about writing songs. Before
that it was always a question, like, are these songs? I’m not sure.
That as the first time I thought, these are eleven songs, I know
these very well now. And making a record with Grubbs, my brother
Ned, and Albini, who are three very important people to me
musically, and having it be this incredible collaborative piece. It
was all those things together…

D: Even with the drum machine?

W: Even with the drum machine… the drum machine was kind of a
late entry, because I’d asked Britt Walford to play, and he said he
could, and at the last moment he said he couldn’t, and my younger
brother had that drum machine and he loaned it to me, and I sort of
reworked the songs all around the drum machine. But the drum
machine, I’d been introduced to Albini by Big Black, and that was a
drum machine band…. I didn’t care about a drum machine, and I also
knew Steve couldn’t say anything about it. And he would approach it
like it was an instrument, so that was kind of exciting. So when
Britt couldn’t do it, that was disappointing, but I didn’t feel
like it was a trade down for the record overall. Not to say that
the drum machine has anywhere near the worth of Britt, but it’s
different, and I didn’t feel like the record was marred beyond
value. But even after doing that, life didn’t get better, in terms
of being related to the other things that go on with making music.
It was still confusing and difficult.

D: So BPB helps in terms of diverting?

W: Yeah, kind of. And there was another couple of years of doing
stuff, there was the Joya record, another couple of
sessions of doing stuff.

D: And you’re not happy with using the name Will Oldham?

W: No, not at all. I thought it was great to put out Arise,
Therefore with no name on it, but I knew that that wasn’t
something most people would appreciate, especially people who had
to work with the record, whether it was the distributor or record
store or writer or the record labels. I liked that, but I knew it
was kind of a one time thing. But I couldn’t think of another name
[frustrated] it doesn’t matter, put Will Oldham on it.

D: BPB, how did you come up with name?
[page break]
W: I was thinking about it that other day, and starting to realise
the significance of when it happened was flying back from a tour in
Australia, and the band was essentially Jim White, Mick turner and
Liam Hayes. And we had so much fun, with such good musicians, great
people, intense people. And I think coming back from that trip I
started to think, like, fun needs to be built in, no matter what
else, it has to be part of it. And in that 17 hour flight over the
pacific ocean, I just thought, who should be singing these songs,
or something. And the idea of how could I make it totally
integrated into what’s going on. So, essentially, let’s bring in
this Bonnie person. Because people are always going to be looking
for the singer, for the root of the song, for the meaning of the
song, for the identity of the song. That always made me
uncomfortable, and I thought, well, I want to keep on making
records, but I don’t want to be uncomfortable, so let there be
somebody I can look to, also. So when someone talks about where the
song comes, or is identifying with singer, that I can say, yeah I
know, I do too sometimes, I really do, isn’t that cool. And
honestly say that, and that’s how I feel.

D: It’s a good way of overturning expectations?

W: Yeah, but also, if I want to play shows a hundred times a
year, or less or more, and say I wanted to sing the same song at
every show. A hundred times a year, singing the same song. How else
can I honestly occupy the song, unless there’s some other way, some
other interface that can honestly occupy the song at every
performance. Because there’s no way an individual can without
remaining static in their development and their emotion. And that
definitely shouldn’t be part of equation.

D: Bonnie suggests youth.

W: It does over here, in the States it just is a feminine thing.
No one ever uses Bonnie for anything expect if it’s for a woman’s
name.

D: If you can bring on this persona, is there a risk that
persona become fixed? If you put on a mask, the mask becomes fixed
to the face?

W: Again, I think that was Elvis’s problem, among other people.
I think Bela Lugosi probably had the same problem. Because I
haven’t given that many rules to what Bonnie’s existence can be,
and because I pass in and out of it often unawares – happily so –
to where, sometimes I’m aware there’s a little bit of both in the
present moment, and sometimes I all of a sudden realise there’s no
Will at all, or no Bonnie at all, at any given times. It just seems
to be … it just happens. It’s not restrictive at all, it’s the
opposite, it’s very free. So in my mum’s living room, or in church,
or with friends, and I’m Will, completely Will, there’s no Bonnie
anywhere nearby. But I could also be on a tour, or in church, or
singing somewhere, or driving somewhere, and can be almost
completely Bonnie Billy. And then realise, ah, this feels so great
to be free of Will, at this particular moment.

D: Is BPB the more outgoing face, the more hell raising
face?

W: No, it’s not this simple

D: There’s less of your guitar on this album. Is there less
physical connection of you and the music?

W: I feel kind of the opposite, because I feel much more
physically connected to my voice, and I like the physicality of the
voice, and I like the physicality of the voice, and how the voice
can physically occupy a song. So that was the reason for that,
because I wanted to fully occupy the song, rather than do something
that I don’t feel that comfortable doing. I wanted to do something
that I feel more comfortable doing. Sometimes playing the guitar
requires a cerebral … I thought it would be better for the song,
more fully realising of the song.

D: Is this the first one you’ve got echo on the voice?

W: Right, there may be, and I think I went into it with a couple
of ideas…. I’ve never been comfortable using echo and using reverb,
and sometimes I think this is just a weird hang up of mine, because
so many people use it so well, And there’s often times when I’ll
be, use a bunch of reverb on there, and I’ll be like no, less, and
he’ll say, like this? No, no less, less. And he’ll be like, there’s
no more on it. And I wasn’t sure why that was, so I thought I was
going to try and let it happen, let the reverb happen, oh and
there’s echo on "Heart’s Arms", the full echo… which I don’t think
has ever… there might be something on I See A Darkness
that has an echo. As well as doubling the vocal… but there’s
certain moments, where I thought, let me try the doubling…

D: I was thinking echo on the voice detaches it a little
bit…

W: Normally I’d think that, but to me, "Heart’s Arms" is one of
the most direct songs I’ve ever recorded.

Also I like the idea of sometimes drawing attention to the fact
that it’s the record. The honest, the purity…. But I also like
drawing the fact that it’s a record.

Not only is it a moment in time, it’s a
construction. And there’s something beautiful about that.